Little By Little
by Graceful Rage
Summary: Not everybody was cut out to be a warden, as Yamamoto had cruelly learned. But that didn't mean he was just going to sit there and grovel. He was going to change the world in whatever way he could, one step at a time.


A sun the color and shape of a marigold beamed down on the outskirts of Paradise Beach, lighting the land, shimmering off the plants, and producing a fresh batch of sweat on a blue-eyed girl's forehead. Penny squinted one eye shut as she raised a gloved hand to shield herself from the sun. Grogginess took over, causing her muscles to go slack and for the hand to smack against her peach colored face. She felt the fabric absorb the perspiration and grimaced at the thought of a wet, smelly stain plaguing her glove. Penny, despite pursuing the life of a carefree tomboy, never completely let go of the pristine lifestyle she'd lived all her childhood in prior. Oh well, she could just toss it into the washer when she got back to headquarters.

In an effort to distract herself from the uncleanliness- and unbeknownst to her any connection, physical or mental, to her pre-runaway life- she glances down at the tangerine vivosaur curled around her. Her Hypsi had plopped down asleep beside her bone buggy after waiting for so long and was now snoring up a storm. Its head was nudged against Penny's thigh, and with every exhale the blades of grass under its nostrils parted. If it weren't for the vivosaur's fiery coloration, one would've mistaken her for an air-type with the amount and force of air that she discharged from her nostrils. (Though that assumption wasn't that far off since Penny heard Hypsis revived on this side of the world had that typing- and were much cuter in her opinion). Smiling quaintly, Penny leaned back against the tire of her bone buggy and reached down to stroke the Hypsi's head, the very top of it to be exact- her favorite place. A smile crawled its way up her partner's beak and the muscles on her face relaxed a fraction of an inch.

The bursting open of the bone buggy's door disrupted the harmony between girl and vivosaur. Penny shot to attention as she focused on the open vehicle, hand still on the Hypsi's head, which had now raised.

Yamamoto's head poked out of the open doorway. He swiveled it in their direction, his glasses glinting in the sunlight as the two locked eyes. With a grin and a playful cock of the aforementioned head, Yamamoto leaped out of the bone buggy and onto the grass below. His glasses bumped a bit off his face from the impact. He stood up straight, raising an arm to secure them back on as the hint of a blush spread on his face.

"It's fixed!" The arm that'd been adjusting the eyewear opted to reach for the electronic tablet tucked under his arm. He held it out to the girl. Penny, now standing up and securing an arm around a groggy, rudely awakened Hypsi, reached out and took it, peering down at it. Numbers, diagrams, wireframes and terms littered the screen. She nodded, a brief "hmm" fluttering from her lips. Truth was she had no idea what she was looking at; it was all Greek to her. But Penny thought any confusion at what was apparently Yamamoto's interest would be rude and pretended to understand the images at her disposal.

Of course Yamamoto, smart as he was, saw right through the facade. He bent forward, a finger tapping at one of the figures. The front part of her bone buggy, by the looks of it. "You see that? There was glitch with the sonar you installed. It overwrote the information on the vivosaurs you already had registered, so it was acting like you hadn't revived them yet." Yamamoto retreated, tucking his arms behind his back and giving her a small, reassuring smile. "Luckily it only took a little troubleshooting to get it functioning correctly. You should be able to integrate that Hypsi arm fossil now."

Penny nodded, grateful for the boy's simplified explanation, and even more thankful he left out on applying the jargon Professor Little used on the daily. Cute as Little was, she found it an eternal struggle to understand half of his ideas and theories. "Thanks!" She cheerfully handed the tablet back to Yamamoto. "Victoria will be pretty happy about this. I'll tell her to say thanks when I get the chance."

Yamamoto stares through half-lidded, peat-colored eyes, his smile wiped from his face. "...Victoria?" Two successive blinks, then realization dawns. "Oh, is that the name of your Hypsi?"

"Yep!" Penny replied, looking back toward the vivosaur of the hour. The Hypsi- Victoria- wanders around behind them, sniffing at the yellow-green blades of grass on the ground. A flower invades the path of her nostrils and an updraft of pollen causes the vivosaur to sneeze, tiny sprouts of smoke shooting out from her beak. She looks up quizzically at the human duo. Penny waves her hand casually, giving the vivosaur her cue, and Victoria dashes off to Igno-knows-where. Yamamoto's eyes follow the tangerine form as it darts across the winding slopes. "Don't worry about her," Penny said, almost reading the boy's mind. "She likes running a few laps around the race track. You see, she was a birthday gift from my parents so we grew up together, and my family had acres of land that she loved to rush around in. Victoria must enjoy it, the fresh air rushing by her and all that." A nostalgic smile spread across Penny's face.

"What do you mean by acres of land?" Yamamoto turned back to her, head tilted and eyebrows raised. "Wouldn't that mean you came from a rich family?"

Penny's forehead immediately presumed sweating, but not from the sweltering heat this time. "Wha-?! Oh, no no! Did I say _acres_ I meant... a... lot. A lot! Yeah, we had this huuuuuuuge lawn, you should've seen it. Took us forever to mow though. Ahahaha!" She flicked the perspiration beading down her face that threatened to give her away, chuckling in a way she hoped wasn't too awkward. Penny wasn't the best actor, and Yamamoto _did_ spot her faking her intelligence mere moments earlier. Would he-

"If you say so..." Whew, crisis averted!

Peat eyes glance back toward the horizon where occasionally a tangerine silhouette would zip by before disappearing behind rock formations. Hands return to behind his back as he sways in place. "You know, the vivosaur I expected to be the fast runner was Dahlia's."

"Oh, Dahlia's Pachy is pretty fast too," Penny piped up. "You should've seen it during the battle portion of our tests. It absolutely _carried _our team during the whole thing. It even managed to outspeed a U-Raptor!" The girl gave a sidelong glance, twirling her hair with the tip of her finger. "Welllll, that's mostly because Victoria distracted it, but still! That Pachy hit things like a train!"

"It's good that it did." Yamamoto nodded, his voice low, a bit like a father giving their unruly kid instructions. "Hypsis aren't the best at fighting directly. If that Pachy fell, your chances of victory would've been much more slim."

"..Hey."

The monosyllable statement rings of curiousity, something Yamamoto is all too well accustomed with. Naturally, he meets the stone-blue eyes of his female client, whose eyes are wide and mouth slightly open in a gesture that was quite unlike Penny. "You never told any of us what it was like. The Warden Test, that is. Or your vivosaur either. And... I'm sorry if it's a little rude to ask but, you're pretty smart, Yamamoto. So how did you fail it?"

His shoulders tense up, not at the question's subject but the _directness-_ the directness of this person he was barely close to who was now up and asking him about it all, questioning his intellect. Yamamoto turns away from Penny's curious eyes, focusing on other, more pleasing things like the horizon of Paradise Beach, of how nice the weather was, how if the probability of becoming a rogue vivosaur's lunch weren't present he would've proposed a beach party with all the other junior wardens. How tempting it was to grab the nearest beach chair, plop on top of it and soak in the sun's-

"Yamamoto?"

Concern this time. Yes, that's concern in her voice. She's thinking she hurt him, that the question was too personal- technically it was, but not on the scale she's probably speculating. Penny's about to reprimand herself, he's sure. Scorn that bubbly curiosity and vow to never, ever dig into her friends' minds like that again, and he can't let her do that.

So Yamamoto let down his walls, decided to unlock the inner vault securing his memories and splay them out like a photo collection to the girl. He pursed his lips, steadied his breathing, readied himself and looked at Penny but not at her. Just to the side of her, by her ear; he couldn't trust himself to commit to any eye contact.

"My vivosaur," Yamamoto adjusts the glasses, a bad habit. "The vivosaur I used for the battle test was a Tarbo."

Immediately, fireworks sparkle in Penny's features. "A Tarbo?!" Her eyes widen further, gleaming and glittering as her mouth dropped open. "Aren't those, like, super hard to clean? I mean, I remember finding a body once out here, but I completely bombed the cleaning. And that was _after_ I became a warden! How did you manage to get a fossil with the equipment we were given?"

...To be completely honest, Yamamoto barely knew either. Or more specifically, he failed to understand why people found it so hard. He remembered activating the sonar, maneuvering the bone buggy to a calm grotto and whipping out the hammer and drill. The rest followed so naturally, the controls and joysticks melting into his hands like ice cream on a hot day. He perceived every joule of force, the speed of the input- it all happened as naturally and easy as filling out a word search. And while his technique was nowhere near the level of the experts, as demonstrated when he left a few unfortunate lines on the leg fossil, almost as if he tried to grill it, he'd succeeded in freeing the Tarbo from its rocky prison. Plus, like Penny said, the fact he managed to dig it up with an abnormally weaker battery and tools meant something drastic about him.

That was about the moment Yamamoto knew: he could be a warden.

When he first scrawled his name onto that registration paper for Captain Stryker's Junior Warden Program, he regarded the occupation as no more than something that'd kill time, similar to how one might read a book they had their eye on. (Did people still read books these days? Was he the only one that read ones with actually covers and paper?) It was only after sitting in one of their bone buggies, one of the most influential technological advances in history, that he began to realize the pure magnitude of being a warden- and did it make his heart race.

Though Yamamoto had incomplete emotions toward becoming a warden at first, there was one thing he had his heart set on the whole time: doing something in life. Despite his intelligence, he never considered himself having done anything useful for society. It felt like a waste, his smarts that was. But now he had the chance to change the world, to become an influence, and most of all _enjoy it_. Being a warden meant that he could finally apply all the knowledge he'd acquired while still learning more about this still-enigmatic world.

You don't always get what you wish for.

_"Tarbo, stand your ground!" Yamamoto's muffled voice erupted through the radio. He mentally jot down a note to fix it, tacking it up alongside the other improvements he planned, examples including an higher rate of firing support shots, increase in the sonar range and a larger glove compartment. A silly behavior at the time, building up dreams that still had the possibility of shattering._

_The Tarbo planted its feet into the coliseum floor as best as it could- a difficult task, what with it being so smooth and level- just as the opposing Goyle slammed into its side. Yamamoto's vivosaur staggers back from the impact, and the boy believes he hears the sound of one of its legs twisting. He flinches. The behemoth of brown and gold falls to the ground and the boy shouts- not remembering what, despite his photographic memory, but shouts nonetheless. As if the exclamation contained power the Tarbo stumbles back onto a single foot, the other one balancing flimsily next to the working one as if it were an old man's cane, a notable swell around the ankle._

_"Come on... Come on..." Yamamoto bends over the monitor, eyes trained and quivering on the display representing his current Fossil Power, the energy needed to enhance a vivosaur's attacks. It's at a considerable amount, the mid-fifties, but not high enough for his Tarbo. Nervous, desperate eyes dart to the vivosaur, who can only grit his teeth and glare at the barely, scratched Goyle. He can't hold out much longer- Tarbo's defenses weren't nearly as high enough. And Sydney's Nasaur was too busy zigzagging between an F-Raptor's legs to heal him._

_Now or never..._

_Yamamoto grits his teeth, knuckles white on the joysticks. "TARBO!" The air-elemental's head rises, a crimson eye dark and gleaming. He lifts his bad foot and with a guttural growl, helicopters on his remaining one. His tail hurls at the opposing Goyle-_

_-and swipes over its head by a good foot or so._

_Yamamoto's heart plummets as the Tarbo completes its rotation, back open and exposed toward the ankylosaur. Fighter and vivosaur lock eyes, blood spills onto peat, but the magnetic contact is shattered in the form of a red-spiked bullet that slams into the latter's spine. An long, anguished roar, a green flash of light, and all that's left of Yamamoto's Tarbo is the green-rimmed dino gear pinched between the Goyle's jaws._

_It stares up at him through mocking yellow eyes. Within moments, a high-pitched cry and another flash, this one blue, notifies him that Sydney's Nasaur has fallen as well._

_They'd lost._

"Well anyway, shouldn't you have won with a vivosaur like that?" Penny's buoyant voice breaks him out of the memory. Her gloved hands are clasped in front of her, stone-blue eyes locked onto him with an expression almost exactly like the one his Tarbo gave him. The coincidence sends shivers throughout his body.

It takes a second for Yamamoto to straighten his shoulders and convert back into his trademark, glasses-adjusting posture. To force the image of the vivosaur out of his head and remember it's _Penny_ asking him why he failed, demanding why he chose to gamble only to roll a one. Human, not dinosaur. Skin, not scales. Success, not failure. "Only if you can control it," he finally answers. "I revived a vivosaur as powerful as a Tarbo, yes, but I only excavated its leg fossil. As you know, that means its strongest attacks were only in its lower-body. Bites and tackling wouldn't have done nearly as much damage as a tail bash or a stomp, and elemental attacks were out of the question."

Yamamoto senses relief flowing through his bones now that he's playing the know-it-all role. "But those aren't very accurate. At least for a tyrannosaur, and they cost a large quantity of fossil power."

Penny places a palm on her peach-colored cheek, leaning into it. "So you lost because you couldn't hit them... Is that right?"

The boy nods, and as much as he craves to dash out of there before Penny can begin patronizing him, he forces himself to maintain eye contact and continue his explanation.

"But if it was such a risk, why didn't you settle with normal bites and tackles and stuff like that?"

"Because it wouldn't have done enough damage!" Yamamoto shouts, then immediately cringes and bites his tongue for his sudden outburst. "Sorry..." An understanding nod from the girl prompts him to continue. "Even if I played it safe my attacks wouldn't have accumulated enough damage to defeat the Goyle or F-Raptor we fought. We lost because of my choice of vivosaur, not my strategy. If I decided to bring a Sungari or even a Lophus, Sydney and I would have had a better chance of winning." Head shifts sideways, back towards Paradise Beach. "Instead I picked the biggest vivosaur I saw and sent it into battle without even considering..." Like the ocean's waves, he drifts off.

"...You think that's intentional?"

"Huh?!" At that, Yamamoto perks up and stares with widened eyes at Penny. _What does she mean by "intentional"? Is she... suggesting it was rigged? That's ridiculous_-

"The fact that one of the first few fossils you could dig up here is Tarbo." Oh, so that's what she meant. Wait, wha- "You know, to sort of... weed out any people who may think 'WOOOOOOOOOOW! This thing looks like a T-Rex~! Gasp! T-Rexes are super strong, so this must be super duper uber strong too! Yeah! I'm going to wipe the floor with everyone; I don't even need to rely on anyone or anything else. BOW TO ME, PEASANTS!" Penny suddenly coughs, plastering a gloved hand to her windpipe as she swallows.

"Sorry." Her voice comes out slightly rasped. "But you get what I mean, right? If there were wardens with that mentality, how much more dangerous would you think it'd be? It's much better this way that people understand how to build their teams- that bigger isn't always better- through the Warden Test instead of out in the real world."

Black eyebrows and jacket covered arms raise in unison. _She's right. What if I'd brought Tarbo to fight a rogue vivosaur- say it was me who was roped into that mess with the Gorgo and not Jura?- and the stakes were higher? The consequences greater? If my failure to control Tarbo ended in someone getting hurt_.

Nonetheless he arrives at the conclusion he drew on that very same day.

"So you're saying I'm naive? That's why I didn't pass?"

Penny gasps, arms flailing in front of her face and palms raised. "No, no! You're not! I mean, it's a tyrannosaur so of course you'd think it were powerful, and also the best thing to bring into the battles." A smile graces the blonde's face; an attempt to reassure him, perhaps.

But Yamamoto understood the truth. No matter what Penny said, what the idealistic, bubbly girl believed, he refused to deny the sheer stupidity he committed that day. To him, it stood at the same level as Nate's antics. If he really were as intelligent as his grades back home suggested, he would've sat down, taken time to examine the vivosaurs he'd revived. Maybe even tested their compatibility with Sydney by battling rogue vivosaurs. But no, he gave Tarbo the smallest of glances, liked what he saw, and rushed into Fossil Stadium as a kid with money would rush into an ice cream parlor. The whole fiasco was ironic. Him, Yamamoto, the straight-A student, to commit a blunder like that...

Penny must've seen the disagreement swimming in his eyes, (He blamed his glasses, really, and how they drew so much attention to those peaty peepers of his), because before Yamamoto can ascend to the surface of his stream of consciousness and into the real world she's in his face, staring him down with an uncharacteristic pout on her lips. He suppresses a squawk as a light dust of red sprinkles on his face.

"...ey," Penny says, voice calm regardless of her intense look. "Hey," she repeats. "Don't get so down on yourself. Battling might not just be your thing, but you can help- you have helped us in so many other ways. Whenever somebody has a question, you're raising your hand to answer it. You're always making these really interesting observations and helping us out whenever there's a problem with out bone buggies. And most importantly," she backs off, clapping her hands together for emphasis. "You can actually understand what Professor Little's saying! You've got to teach me how you do it. With a brain like yours I won't need to go to school anymore."

"R-really?" The black haired boy shakes his head; a tiny smile materializes. "Thanks, but... I'm not so sure about the 'never having to go back to school' part."

"I'm positive! No more boring lectures for me!"

Their smiles are contagious and the duo soon find themselves beaming, though Penny's is much wider. For some reason, Yamamoto gets the notion that it's a lot more _genuine_ this time around compared to all the other grins Penny wore.

Suddenly, a birdlike cry splits across the outskirts of Paradise Beach, nearly catching the boy off guard to the point of falling off his feet. Penny whirls around and Yamamoto looks over the girl's red-and-pink covered shoulder to behold the sight of a tiny Hypsi glaring up and chirping furiously at a fat Lophus. The blue reptile somehow managed to look confused, astonished and fearful all at the same time. The best Yamamoto could describe it was if someone shoved a piece of sour candy into its mouth.

"VICTORIA!" Penny cries exasperatingly, as if this happened on a daily basis. ...Then again, maybe it did. She twirls on her heel like a ballerina and darts past the intrigued Yamamoto as she races to her bone buggy, hopping into the still-ajar doorway. Before she can climb in fully, she glances over her shoulder to face him. "I have to go!" Obviously. "But just so you know if anything comes up, I'll let you know. I'll let you know if I need your help!"

With that, the warden propels her body into the driver's seat and slams the door with fierce _BANG!_ The engine starts up- if Dahlia were present she would've said that it purred- and with a squeal of the tires Penny's gone, rushing to Victoria and the Lophus currently chasing each other across the dig site. For a few moments Yamamoto watches the chase scene unfold before the trio scrambles out of sight behind the rocky outcroppings.

Nothing else to do, the boy tucked his electronic tablet back under his arm, perked up his shoulders, and started back to town, smile still on his face.

It's midday, the marigold sun shining as it always appeared to on this island. As the first buildings poke through the treetops surrounding the landmark's singular piece of civilization, Yamamoto's eyes instinctively drift toward the roof of fossil stadium. For a moment the bitter pang of failing his test, of having so much promise beforehand only for it to fall apart like the his grandmother's pie crusts, rattles his heart. He remembers the euphoric feeling of reviving that Tarbo, Sydney's banter over the radio that muffled their voices as they toured Paradise Beach, Dahlia rambling about bone buggy modifications in the garage while he loaded support shots into his buggy.

He remembers the victorious, smug looks of the Goyle and F-Raptor as their fighters cheered and high-fived. He remembers Stryker's apologizing words, how Sydney merely shrugged and packed his bags for back to Australia, how Penny and Nate, the wardens assigned to stay in Fossil Park Asia had left before he could talk to them, too caught up in the prospect of adventure to notice him.

At the same time...

He remembers how he didn't want to grovel then, how just when Stryker was finishing his "you did your best"s and turning away to find someone else, Yamamoto had stood up and pleaded with him to wait. The head of the Warden Junior Program had halted, swiveled back toward him and listened with what Yamamoto was certain was great interest.

_"When I first signed up for this, I didn't think much of it. But after hearing what happened with Jura and that Gorgo... That was the point when I realized what it meant to be a Warden- their duties. And I wanted to partake in that life. I wanted to do something impactful for once in my own life. I wanted to help people!_"

Yamamoto knew a lot of things, but he couldn't pinpoint why pouring out his desires to Captain Stryker came so easily. Maybe it was because Stryker came off as a textbook example of a father figure to him. Maybe the man's devotion to justice and law were a factor. Or... Maybe it was because in the deepest recesses of Yamamoto's heart he'd speculated that the world famous Fossil Fighter had committed his fair share of blunders too.

_"I want to help people, even if I'm not capable of being a warden. So... If there's anything you think I could do here at Warden HQ, tell me. Please._"

He remembers the smile that crawled across the man's face, how he'd nodded and placed a placating hand on his shoulder and said he had the perfect job in mind for him. He remembers Professor Little introducing him to the lab and his growing eagerness as Yamamoto understood each and everyone of his theories, agreeing and challenging them as needed. He remembers how his friends didn't truly forget him. How they'd always commission him for technical problems- Nate and Dahlia especially- and he'd always be there, ready and waiting.

Penny was right: fossil battles weren't Yamamoto's forte, but he could still help in any way he could whether they needed troubleshooting or even a difficult question on their homework. And hey, maybe someday when he was more confident, more comfortable with his position as Little's assistant, he could pick up Tarbo's dino gear again, and maybe his friends would return the favor and help _him_ this time around, give him some pointers in controlling the vivosaur. But fossil battles would merely stay a hobby of his, now that he knew for certain the lab was where he belonged.

Right now he was just in the background, a benchwarmer as his friends raced around in their bone buggies, revived vivosaurs and unleashed their primordial ferocity. But soon he'd be acknowledged. Soon he'd become just as important as them. (He'd propose the possibility of surpassing them, but then Jura entered his head and he playfully shook it off). It'd take time, but soon he'd make his mark on the world.

Bit by bit.

Little by little.

The metallic doors to the laboratory opened at the swipe of Yamamoto's keycard, pouring the technicolor lights that ran through the walls into the lobby for a brief moment. He pulled up the swivel chair that he'd once caught Little spinning in- smiling quaintly at the memory- sat down, hooked up the electronic tablet to the computer, and turned it on.

* * *

**Holy crap, Grace just wrote something. Man the harpoons, the end times are upon us!**

**In all seriousness, there's a lot I want to say about this fanfic. This stemmed from my nonsensical interest in Yamamoto, of course. Specifically I wanted to know what it was like for him to fail his Warden Test, and just about him in general. Since most of the cast was made up of wardens, it would've been nice to know what it was like for a character who wasn't one. Unfortunately, not all wishes come true. Overall I'd consider this one of my above-average works. The writing's fine in my opinion (a little shaky near the middle) but I feel the characterization I gave Yamamoto was all over the place. But hey, it's been years since I actually sat down and wrote anything so that's just expected.**

**And yes, you read that right. Sydney uses a Nasaur. I kind of wanted him to use a vivosaur whose real world counterpart was discovered in Australia, plus I'd recently grown attached to it after using it in an herbivore-only run of the first game. As for any other trivia stuff regarding this fanfiction, when I first got the idea I wanted Professor Little to get some screentime, but as I began writing I forgot all about that idea and took it in an entirely new direction. Also it was Jura that was talking to Yamamoto, not Penny, but I changed it last second after finishing the rough draft for this and honestly, I think it was a smart decision. The interactions were so much better imo. The decision for Yamamoto to use a Tarbo was inspired by my own playthrough of Frontier where I did the same thing, learned just how much FP was required to activate its Tail Bash skill and soon got my head handed to me.**

**Wow that was a long Author's Note. Sorry about that. But for the one percent of you who probably bothered to read through this lengthy thing, thanks! Hope you enjoyed it!**


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